Stripped down version of the stack mctools

[Richard Gaskin]

Alejandro Tejada wrote:
> Hi Richard,
> 
> Thanks a lot for answering this question! :-)
> 
> Richar Gaskin wrote:
>
>>Sounds like a lot of work.  
>>Setting up the MC IDE is not trivial 
>>(at least on OS X) and when you're done 
>>all you have is the MC IDE. ;)
> 
> But, Could i get permission
> to modify the IDE, by deleting
> some stacks or translating to spanish
> some labels? 

There's no permission I can give you that Scott Raney hasn't already 
given all of us more than a year ago:

Check out the "Copyright and Permissions" card in Help->Licensing. It's 
open source, governed by the X11 license, so you're welcome to 
cannibalize to your heart's content.

:)

> I want to simplify as much as i can
> the user experience of editing the
> content and appareance of these stacks.
> 
> If i could, i'll like to make this process as
> foolproof as possible.
> 
> Teachers will be only able to add images,
> text, change colors, draw graphics...
> not editing or reading the scripts that drives
> the interactions provided by the stacks...

That sounds like it's probably within Rev's license terms, and is 
certainly within MC's.

I had to write a multi-lingual editing system for a client this year (US 
English and UK English, which sounds like I'm being funny but there are 
a lot of spelling differences, esp. in the medical field), and for a 
specialized audience we found it easier to just write our own custom UI 
rather than dig into MC's stuff, which often expects other parts to be 
present that we don't use.

But if it works for you I know of no reason why you couldn't rip into it 
and borrow whatever saves you time.

MetaCard Corp. retains the copyright to the MC IDE, so while the license 
allows free exploration/modification/dissection, it's probably a good 
idea to add something like "Portions Copyright 1992-2005 MetaCard Corp."


>>Why not just make your own player?
>
> I already did. By the way, i opened a copy
> of mctools in my player and noticed that
> it do not ask for the home stack...
> and opened as an editable stack.

AFAIK, the only things that requires a licensed Home stack are:

- Getting mctools.mc to load automatically when the engine is launched
- Scripting

But what you're building isn't a scripting environment, but merely a 
production tool, so I see no technical reason why loading MC should be 
problematic (other than the window modality, as you noted, but opening 
"MetaCard Menu Bar" as "palette" should take care of that).


> I started to delete some stacks and reduced its
> size from 965 kb to 653 kb. It still works ok, as
> i'm able to create stacks, save them, etc, etc...
> all within the player...
> 
> Now to customize still more this stack mctools,
> i'll like to add some special info to the stack
> everytime a teacher saves them: an encoded
> version of a md5digest added as a custom property.
> 
> The player, later will match this custom
> property with the md5digest of the data to get
> sure it has not been modified.
> 
> Could this scheme works fine, as i had described it?

Sounds reasonable enough to me.  I love MD5 as a checksum; I'm adding it 
to WebMerge to check when database records change.  So handy, and only 
takes 24 bytes.


One side note about the X11 license:  we chose it because it is among 
the most free of the free software licenses.  With all due respect to 
the wonderful achievements of Richard Stallman and his GPL, the 
requirement that all derivative works also be governed by the GPL is 
noble in principle but potentially problematic in commercial contexts. 
We chose X11 specifically to avoid such constraints, as it has no 
requirements about the type of license which governs any works derived 
from elements covered by it.

This was done primarily for the benefit of RunRev, so if on the odd 
chance we came up with something that was useful for them they could 
borrow it without any risk to their existing license terms.

But the same principle benefits everyone:  the MC IDE can be freely 
cannibalized for use in other projects, whether proprietary or open 
source, provided (as I understand it) that a notice of copyright for 
relevant portions is provided as described above.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev